


Cherry Wine

by Vutha_Siksta



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula needs a hug, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Self-Insert, Zuko (Avatar) Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23371480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vutha_Siksta/pseuds/Vutha_Siksta
Summary: A modern man is reborn as Zuko, son of Lady Ursa and Firelord Ozai.Things go as expected, except where they don't.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 130





	Cherry Wine

**Author's Note:**

> First time writer here. This is really more of an outline than a story proper, but for some reason I really wanted this put out there for people to read. 
> 
> Title comes from Hozier's song of the same name.

The first months are fuzzy - his mind is old, but the brain is still too young, too unformed, to process. He remembers soft voices, soft skin, soft cloths. He remembers a word repeated over and over.

Zuko.

It isn't until the film fades from his eyes and he sees the rich red and golds around him that he realizes that it's his name, but when he does he is content. This is a story he knows how to follow, a part he knows how to play. He is not planning to fight the destiny that looms before him too hard.

\--

He expected the hatred to come easily, slipping over him like a well-loved housecoat, but it doesn't. It fights him every step of the way - it fights him in Ozai's gentle laughter, in warm nights spent reading together by the window in his parents' room. It fights him in Azula's little baby fists reaching up at him, her mumbled 'Zu! Zu!' as she begs for him to pick her up. It fights him in the way Grandfather has a small, proud smile when Iroh brings Lu Ten home and the whole family eats together.

Unexpectedly, he dreads the scar not yet on his face for something other than anticipated pain and loss of sight.

\--

The calculated cruelty he anticipates from the first day after Azula was born never comes. She never hurts him much worse than the half-forgotten memories of a toddler nephew a lifetime behind him - the childish sort of carelessness that everyone has before they learn better. Ursa scolds her for it, but not any more than he remembers being scolded. Not as Zuko, of course - he had already learnt these lessons before he was born here - but from Before.

\--

The fire comes more easily than he thought it would - flametongues reaching out freely from his hand controlled as easily as his fingers of flesh, his hand closes and the fire wraps around itself exactly as he wants it to. He wonders at how this simplicity, this sense of power, is still nothing compared to Azula's as-yet-unrevealed talent. 

Against his will, he is proud of how special his sister is.

\--

The years pass simply, softly, safely. His father is never openly cold or derisive of him, only ever so in comparison to how warm and openly proud he is of Azula - the prodigy, the genius. He can see how it would cut and burn at a real child, but to him it is nothing more than a vague sense of loss for those times by the window.

Azula flourishes under their father's direct attention, growing in power and skill and cunning. He sees how her lips twist from her childish smiles into the proud smirks he once feared from her, but he understands. He smirks the same way when he 's alone - no one has figured out that he's holding back in classes, that his fumbled steps in practice are purposefully made. 

No one except Azula. It's why she smirks, after all. It's why she croons 'Oh, Zuzu. Princes aren't meant to be so _clumsy_.' like it's a joke only the two of them get, because it is. He blusters and fumes and shouts, and she grins wildly at the act he puts on for her.

\--

"Dad's going to kill you." Azula sing-songs, the same way he remembers his siblings doing in another life when he took the last cookie from the jar without asking. He rolls his eyes in answer, "Dad would never do that."

She starts to talk about what she'd overheard their father and the Firelord talking about whilst she eavesdropped, and he hurriedly shushes her when he hears footsteps outside the door.

\--

Their mother is gone in the morning. There are no final words, no reassurances of love, no hand shaking him awake in the dead of night with promises that it was all for him. He is awake and she is gone and it hurts more than he thought it would.

\--

The next three years play out like some muddy fusion of what he expected this life to be and what it actually was until now. Azulon is dead, Ursa is gone, Iroh is never around, and Ozai never smiles anymore. The only one who hasn't changed is Azula, and even she crawls into his bed in the dead of night sometimes, crying silently for the mother who used to sing for her, for the grandfather who used to play with her, for the father who no longer hugs her.

\--

The day of the general's meeting comes sooner than he thought it would, and he fears. But he knows his place, he knows his lines, and he plays his part.

He bows. He begs. He burns.

Azula comes to him as he heals with a sharpness in her words that he'd never heard before. He doesn't understand what she's hiding behind her false glee and eyes that could be glinting with either mirth or tears.

He doesn't realize until he's on the ship and out at sea that he's leaving her just like all of the rest have.

\--

When he first realized he was Zuko, he expected his banishment to be a welcome thing - time away from the terror of Azula and Ozai to learn everything Iroh had to teach him, spending no more than a token effort to find Aang.

Now that he's here, his vulnerable sister is left alone to the Firelord's attention, and he remembers the way that their father's eyes grew darker with each day.

He hunts down the Avatar with a fervor that would put an angry teenager to shame.


End file.
